My Idea of a University
By Professor James Katende, Ph.D, FNSE, Electrical Engineer (COREN).
Dean, College of Science & Technology,
Covenant University.

Introduction

My early idea of what a university is was formed in connection with Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, long before I became an undergraduate there. At the time, I was attending one of the prestigious Catholic Mission Schools known as St. Mary’s College, Kisubi, also in Uganda. Dr. Watson, an elderly lecturer at Makerere University, used to drive a distance of 20 km every Sunday morning to Kisubi to conduct the service for students belonging to Church of Uganda’s Anglican Communion. His conduct and enthusiasm planted the seed in me that some day I would be a university lecturer. Visits to Makerere University’s facilities such as the Computer Centre, the library, the bookshop, administrative building, etc., made an impression on me that a University is a serene environment where the brightest are privileged to work or study. I was therefore fired to work had so as to be admitted into Makerere University. I eventually became a student of Makerere University in September 1975, but for only a couple of months as I had to leave in November 1975 for University of Lagos, Nigeria, on an INTERAF Scholarship to study Electrical Engineering. Over time I have closely associated with several universities both as a student and as a worker, namely, University of Lagos, University of Rome (La Sapienza), Bayero University, Kano, and Covenant University, to name but a few.

In this paper, I take the view that a modern university is a production line that is characterized by the conditions it creates for achieving high efficiency with respect to the functions of teaching, research, and community service and whose products must compete in an international marketplace. After briefly examining the current state of Nigerian universities, I go on to highlight the imperatives, opportunities, and challenges of sustaining high quality university products.

Mission of Universities

I have come to regard a university as a "knowledge factory", whose mission is to perform three major functions:

Teaching and/or knowledge transfer such that the products of this process are granted academic degrees at different levels (bachelor, master, and doctorate) in a variety of subjects.

Research – basic and applied – for purposes of knowledge creation and problem solving.

Community service. A university must of necessity impact positively on its immediate community by rendering services that add value to that community.

Research occupies a central place in all activities of a university. It has capacity to generate new knowledge that may reinforce the teaching functions, and provide opportunities to solve bugging problems of the community. This is particularly the case if research:

Targets issues affecting humanity, especially in science, engineering and medicine. This requires that researchers should have a "nose" for detecting problems that are of immediate relevance to local and global communities.

Employs the latest techniques or methodologies.

Lays emphasis on collaborative and interdisciplinary work.

State of Nigerian University System

A careful reflection on the current situation in Nigerian Universities reveals that they are far from the desirable state of being factories with high quality products. In other words the mission of the university system is not being realised with regard to the aforementioned functions. The Chancellor of Covenant University, Dr David Oyedepo, recently (on January 31, 2007, during the closing dinner of the Conference on 3G Mobile Communications and Computing) noted that the problem is probably traceable to paucity of masters in our universities today. He opined that for effective knowledge transfer there is the need to revert to the age-old master-apprentice relationship in university scholarship and research. It is noteworthy that the word university is derived from Latin’s universitas magistrorum et scholarium which roughly means "community of masters and scholars" [1]. A master is regarded as: one having control and authority; a guru; a maestro; or one who has attained the highest level of skills. On the other hand a scholar is a learned person or a specialist in a particular brand of knowledge.

For a university to achieve its mission there is need for:
Quality scholars (staff and students).

Proven academic leadership by masters who are prepared to mentor scholars to heights of excellence.

An enabling environment – steady supply of water and electricity, serene working and living conditions, clean and well-maintained campus structures and surroundings, etc.

A cultural interface in terms of university-community interaction on the one hand and university-industry interaction on the other.

However, in contrast a former Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), Prof Peter Okebukola, recently lamented that the universities are presently characterized by [2]:

Weak, poorly motivated and lazy students. Most students are not prepared to go the extra mile in equipping themselves with knowledge. In fact most of them would like to get degrees without doing any work.

Staff with excess teaching load and very little time for research.

A crop of young lecturers with inadequate teaching and research skills.
Staff having weak networking with overseas scholars
An ageing professoriate with outdated research skills
Paucity of relevant and up-to-date literature
Inadequate funds for quality research

The Imperatives
It is important that staff quickly realize the following imperatives. First of all in today’s information age and knowledge economy you either shape in or ship out. The one with cutting-edge knowledge and the ability to put it to appropriate use is king. In the age of globalization academic standards can no longer be compromised without dire consequences. Indeed academics must now live with the constant fear that ICT has provided the potential for their jobs to be outsourced and therefore cannot afford to be complacent any longer. To make universities relevant to the economy it is imperative that the existing university-industry gap be bridged as quickly as possible. Cooperation between universities and industries will go a long way in enriching the educational programmes of universities while engaging academics in solving real-life problems. Another imperative is that academics have to quickly decide which side of the digital divide they belong to. Today you either embrace and engage information technology (IT) so as to exploit all that it has to offer to make you a relevant master and scholar or you disregard it at your own peril.

Opportunities and Challenges
ICT presents viable means for universities to adequately address the unlimited research & development opportunities presented by numerous problems in the energy sector, educational sector, agricultural sector, socio-economic sector, health sector, etc., in Nigeria today.

There are several inherent challenges to be overcome in order to exploit these opportunities. First of all there is the need to get the populace to develop a new mind set in terms of recognition and respect for intellectual authority and a culture of enterprise. Secondly, there must be a shift in cultural norms and value system to a science & technology culture. Thirdly, we have to embark on a crash program to upgrade the skill levels of all academics. Fourthly, curricula must be re-aligned with the requirements of the new information age.

Conclusion
It gives me great pleasure to observe that Covenant University is striving hard to live up to my idea of a university. Water supply, electricity, and Internet access are available on the campus 24 hours every day. The environment is very conducive to fruitful academic work. High calibre members of staff are continually being recruited. Facilities are continually being upgraded. However, there is a lesson to learn from the following observations [3]:
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up you better start running.

The important lesson is that private or public university, individual or groups of individuals, gazelle or lion, the race is on and all must keep moving by all means available in order to remain relevant in today’s knowledge economy. In Covenant University’s context, the race is all about transforming our raw materials (see picture below) into a new generation of leaders that will impact positively on the dignity of the African. Thanks for listening.

References
http://www.wikipedia.org  "University"
Peter Okebukola, "The Philosophy of the Nigerian Universities Research and Development Fair", Paper presented at the Colloquium on Research and Development in Nigerian Universities and Partnership with Industry, organized by the NUC, Abuja, December 20, 2006.
Thomas Friedman, "The World is Flat", Penguin, London, 2006